Are you set in your ways or looking for ways to improve?
Identifying the mindset of your child is a useful technique to employ at the beginning of the year. Understanding what makes your child tick is essential. It will not only make your life easier, as a parent or home educator, but will help your child make changes early on so they can become effective grade risers.
Children with growth mindsets are easy to work with. They believe that they can improve with work and effort and are prepared to have a go. Very straightforward.
On the other hand, children who have fixed mindsets will immediately believe they cannot achieve because they are not good enough. They will create a glass ceiling and will be unwilling to smash through it just because they think they can’t do it.
A consummate fear of failure means they would rather not try to challenge themselves. Focusing on helping them to gain in confidence will be incredibly worthwhile in the long run. A simple way to help with this is using resources that these children can happily work with, that they feel confident using and make them able to work independently.
So, how can you weave this into learning and revision? Asking a struggling child to start writing on a blank sheet of paper will, most likely, make them revert straight back to a “can’t do” attitude. However, setting them off with a workbook that gives hints and tips and does not require huge amounts of writing will help them gain in confidence. Mindset is all about self belief.
Once they start to get positive feedback for their work, they will start to understand that improvement has nothing to do with how clever one is but everything to do with effort.
